Giving Up Is Hard to Do for Yankees

What’s the secret to building a team that’s as resilient as the New York Yankees have been all season, a team capable of rallying from deep deficits under circumstances that might make other teams fold?

Manager Joe Torre couldn’t answer that Saturday after his team erased a late four-run Minnesota lead and won, 6-5, ending the teams’ American League division series in four games.

“You know, every day, every game like this, you think you’ve never seen one like it and all of a sudden, another one pops up,” he said. “This one today is probably as unlikely as any of them.... There’s no secret formula other than playing nine innings, and today it was 11.”

General Manager Brian Cashman joked that if the team did its job better it wouldn’t have to stage all those comebacks.

“You just try to put together as much talent as possible, as much pitching and defense as you can,” he said.

“Ultimately, the thing you’ve got to like is they don’t give up and they don’t give in. They never feel like they’re out of it. People pay good money to see them play, at home and on the road, and they take that seriously.”

Said Gary Sheffield: “You just can’t believe how it happens over and over again. Everybody on this team pulls for each other. If you don’t come through, you know the guy next to you is going to get it done.”

*

No one in the Yankee locker room would say anything inflammatory about the Boston Red Sox. “You’re not getting any headlines out of me,” shortstop Derek Jeter said, smiling.

Cashman was asked if the current version of the Red Sox is the best version he has seen, and he agreed. “Because of [Curt] Schilling and [closer Keith] Foulke, they’re better than they were last year,” Cashman said, “but we like to think we are too.”

*

The Twins’ loss is certain to lead to more roster turnover, the burden of small-market teams.

The contracts of outfielder Jacque Jones, third baseman Corey Koskie, shortstop Cristian Guzman and starter Brad Radke expire at the end of the season, and the Twins probably won’t be able to retain all of them.

“I need a couple of days to think about it,” Koskie said. “We just lost here. We’ll see what happens.”

Manager Ron Gardenhire said, “There’s a lot of tough decisions we have every winter. We know our restrictions. And we’ve lost some very good people around here over the last couple of years who have meant a lot.

“Sure, it’s frustrating because you’re losing people you’ve worked very hard with.... I also understand where we’re at and what we’re trying to do here. That’s just our system. You live with it and you keep working with it. We keep bringing up kids and trying to put them in situations where they’ll be ready down the road. That’s what we have to do.”

*

The Yankees sent Mike Mussina back to New York on Saturday to rest in case they had to play a fifth game against Minnesota today. He is expected to face Schilling in the AL championship series opener.